A grey smudge,
Like a haze of fog
Between two straight lines
Of light blue sky
Eraser shavings
The words, a bird that didn’t fly.
White out plastered pages,
Stark, cold like a hospital
I bandaged the sentence
Cured the diseased word
The story is in the scars
The story you never heard.
Every eraser mark, white out streak,
Tells of an imperfection
It stands out on the page
As blatant as if
It were scratched out with
Shocking pink sharpie.
The story of what I didn’t write
Is in the typed words I’ve deleted
They didn’t even leave a mark
I have to look back

remember
All the words I got wrong
Just to get one right